Arcolin pulled the man closer and whispered in his ear. “Torches on my signal.”

The double tap of understanding; he knew the signal would be passed to those with the flints. Moments crept by. Was that a squelching in the mud ahead? Breathing? That was certainly a human grunt, as someone stumbled or stubbed a toe. Now he could just sense movement, darker shades in the dark. He clapped his hands, once. Movement he had not been certain of seeing stopped.

In that moment of stillness, the torch bearers pulled oiled leather covers off the oil-soaked torches, snapped sparks onto them from flint and steel, and more than half the torches caught light, just as a yell from the stream side jerked his attention that way. But he was not fooled, nor were the veterans: as the torches flared, the enemy in front of them, eyes gleaming in the light, were clear to see. They wore dark cloaks, but glints through them suggested mail underneath. They wavered a moment, but a sharp command from the rear sent them forward, yelling. The front rank tore off their dark cloaks, threw them onto the bramble barrier and tried to run across it; Arcolin’s troops made short work of them, but those following did not stop. The penetration was narrow; Arcolin peered into the rainsparkled darkness to estimate how many there were.

Behind him, he heard more fighting, across the camp. Burek’s voice, Devlin’s—apparently there the enemy had hit a wider front. In front, Stammel and the first two files were engaged at that one penetration, holding it back with ease. Arcolin signaled the torchbearers, who leaned their torchpoles out beyond the barrier—there he was, the enemy commander.

“I’m going out,” he said to Stammel. “Follow me!”

“Captain, are you—?” But that was as far as Stammel got before Arcolin was moving, catching the first two standing on the much-flattened bramble barrier by surprise with his longer sword. Behind, he heard the files coming, as he raced toward the gleam of the enemy commander’s helmet. The torchbearers almost caught up with him, so the light gave him just enough reflection to follow as the enemy commander turned and tried to slip away into the darkness.

“Look—!” came a shout from behind, just as someone rose from the darkness and lunged at him. Arcolin felt a blade scrape against the mail over his ribs and struck out with the buckler on his left hand. Nothing; the fellow had rolled aside. Arcolin whirled, searching in the uncertain light as Stammel and the others came up beside him.

“Got him!” someone said with satisfaction.

“I saw their commander,” Arcolin said to Stammel, half-ashamed now of the impulse that had sent him to chase the man. “I thought he was close enough to catch.”

“He might have been,” Stammel said. Neither of them mentioned the other possibility, that it was a planned ambush. They looked at the dead man in the torchlight. Arcolin took the narrow, wave-curved blade from his hand.